'Top 50 Pharma' is the collective name given to the top pharmaceutical companies in the world ranked by global sales of prescription drugs.

The term 'top pharma' can relate to the top pharmaceutical companies or the top 10 or 50 pharmaceutical companies. It more often than not refers to the top 50 pharmaceutical companies.

Top pharma generally refers to the top pharmaceutical companies by revenue in the previous full financial year.

Current Partnering updates the list of top 50 pharmaceutical companies, or big pharma annually.

Top 50 pharma or bigpharma / big pharma is a term that encompasses the largest players in the pharmaceutical, including Abbott, Actavis, AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck & Co, Merck KgaA, Mitsubishi, Pfizer, Roche, Tanabe and so on. For a full list of top pharma companies see the 'related' tab.

Read: more on top pharma / bigpharma deals in pharma, biotech, life science partnering deal news, insights and glossary

The full list of top 50 pharma companies can be viewed at Current Partnering here.